


Paper Cuts

by bearden2000



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine- Silver Queen
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Paperwork, Series of Unrelated Snippets, other characters later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 14:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16327919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearden2000/pseuds/bearden2000
Summary: Because what hurts the most isn't the gaping wound when you're first hit.  It's the tiny blade that attacks when you least expect it that makes the sort of wound that won't stop bleeding.





	1. Form S-NSE-61

To say that Yoshino and the Nara butted heads was an understatement. One around the magnitude of "Hiruzen Sarutobi, while skilled in creating great ninjas, was not as good in creating great people."

One thing she did agree with the Nara on, however, was the order of allegiances- Village, above them the Alliance, then above them the Clan. But above all of those: your team, your family.

And there was a difference between clan and family. One that had been made clear to her from the first moment she stepped upon Nara land. From the months before that Shikaku had been barred from doing the same and had happily crawled into her little hovel.

From Yoshino's side of it, the clan could sod off for all she cared. It was important to her only in that it was important to Shikaku, his heritage and now his birthright. And so too would it be important to their kids.

But more important, much more important than any clan, was their family. This little thing that Shikaku and her had carved out into the world. These three other people who she would give anything, do anything, for. The fact that Shikaku clearly felt the same as her, had not only been willing to but actually had given all it up for her, for them, still warmed her heart.

The various ninja of Konoha and of the Nara clan helped keep her safe and alive, sure. But what made life worth living in the first place was the gossamer feeling shadow draped on her back and the pitter patter of lethargic little feet paired with an energetic set aping its' quiet ancestors.

* * *

It was an odd position, Yoshino thought, to know your children will be smarter, better than you. Not just to hope for the best for them, but to know the brain that lies behind their eyes works faster than yours, even now.

But it was oh so much better than to have certainty in the other direction. To be forced to be grateful that your child even draws breath, no matter how halting or choked that breath is. To know that while you made yourself comfortable in your limits, those meager attainments are impossible dreams for your daughter. To see frequent catnaps that are arguably her birthright as much as anything else and having to hope she wakes up from them.

To live in the fear that your daughter is in pain that is as constant and ferocious as your hope that the doctors were wrong about her just one more time.

And to be just as certain that Shikako's life would be spent in the bitter awareness of what she could not have. A mind just as brilliant as her twin's trapped in a body that at best didn't constantly torture her. A brother made head of a Clan, head of an Alliance, and a sister shooed off to the side where she wouldn't get in the way.

And all Yoshino could do was look on, like a trueborn Nara, as the pieces slowly fell into place. Doing her best to make sure she would not hate her brother for what he did have and that he would not pity her for what she didn't.

Yoshino had always been a straightforward, practical woman. See that there is a problem, do what you need to do to fix it. But when Shikako was born, her coming struggles foreshadowed by the unending wails, there was nothing she could do. Not as a ninja, not as a mother. Nothing.

It was like when Shikaku got hurt, or when Shikamaru inevitably would, once he grew to take his father's place. There was nothing to do but sit in a chair and badly try to endure the absence of everything but the barest hope that the suffering might end.

She hated it.  ~~hated her~~

Then that terrible night happened, and Yoshino shivered and wept until dawn, in relief for the man that came back and in fear for the baby that she dreaded had left forever. All the while desperately taking back the wishes of that greedy ungrateful woman who had thought them. She'd forgo sleep forever if she was kept awake by the sounds of her little girl.

Yoshino had doted on her daughter, she'd be the first to admit that. She'd delighted in dressing Shikako up and braiding her hair whenever she got the chance. Not because Yoshino had ever been particularly girly, but because she'd come so perilously close to never getting the chance. It was one of many precious gifts she would never take for granted.

And when Shikako threw a pair of pants under the dresses anyway? Yoshino certainly wouldn't be the one gainsay her. Shikako would be having a life full of people letting her know what she couldn't do soon enough.

Indeed, that day had come all too soon, and Shikako's reaction showcased once again that she was her daughter. The sighting of a problem in the world, and willingness to do whatever it took to make it go away. A strength of will and determination that would not be outmatched But also a loyalty to her brother that reminded her oh so much of Shikaku, and it was one of her life's cruelties that she would be forced to break it.

It took all that Yoshino had not to break down at the genuine confusion at the wrongness of what was being said in her daughters eyes. An innocent precursor to the heartbreak that would be constant as she grew up. It was unfair, perhaps, to lay the burden of handing down the verdict to Shikaku, but Yoshino simply couldn't bear it.

Not any more than she could bear to look at that horrid sheet of paper hidden, out of sight, in their bedside table.

* * *

 

Form S-NSE-61 [Shogakko-New Student Enrollment-61]


	2. Form OR-RSRFCI-57310

The first shift right after A-…..his funeral was the hardest.

Ninja were supposed to keep their emotions in check. And the ability to keep the  _confusion-anger-grief_  that grew in the battlefield from affecting day to day life was a necessary survival skill for anyone with enough experience.

For all that, it seemed just a bit too morbid to me to go straight from mourning the passing of a dear comrade to filling out and submitting the paperwork that would erase what were essentially the last physical traces of his existence.

As I stared at the pages in front of me, my hands grew tighter and tighter until the pen grasped within them burst, my hands stained with ink in the manner that I had tried to stain them with blood with my recriminations.

Was there something I could have done? Could I have done an O.R. session with him one more time that would have made him realize something that would have saved him? Or that would have put him in just good enough shape to dodge the metaphorical, or maybe literal, kunai?

But I know the last thing he would want is to see me like this. So I have to, have to be better, live up to the example he set.

I certainly didn't have to be the one to do this. The large crowd that gathered for his funeral warmed my heart, the living proof of what a kind, effervescent, good man he was. And a significant portion of them were just as authorized as me to fill out these forms. But even though every stroke of the pen on the page was a slash of a kunai on my heart, I found that I couldn't let anyone else make this call.

Because he was my senpai.

He took me in when I first joined Cryptology, showing me not only how to survive within it but how to thrive outside of it. He always knew and was on friendly terms with someone who could help me find a certain book, fill out a form, or even just knew a good hidden sushi restaurant a couple blocks from the Tower. The man was such a tour de force that he single handedly kept the reputation that the Mission Desk ninja had earned for themselves with their craziness from spreading to our little fiefdom.

And whenever things got hectic, he was a center of beatific calm, a rock during the raging storm. Not just for me, but for everyone who worked here.

It wasn't so long ago that the department had been sent into a frenzy after one of Konoha's young leaves had managed to narrowly escape the clutches of Orochimaru. The information gold mine she turned out to be was something for which they were unprepared. While everyone was frantically rushing to codify and distribute information as need be, he just calmly sat at his desk, caught up on some busy work and pointed and directed people until the rush calmed down.

What the Hokage symbolically was for the whole village, he had become for our little corner. And it would take many hands to count the number of lives saved and schemes foiled by his actions just on that night alone, much less the rest of his career.

But Orochimaru had managed to strike back.

That simple fact may be what I hate the most. How in all of this he will be overshadowed and stripped of everything that made him who he was. He'll be a footnote in the long lasting campaign against a missing nin. Just another entry in the multitude of sins to be laid at the feet of Orochimaru.

Or perhaps at the feet of his minions, because to add to all the other indignities we didn't get to know even  _that_ much about how he died.

But that was how it always had been, always would be with ninja. I could tell even as the office first accepted me into their social web that there were hosts of ghosts and gaps left unsaid. And more that had been there so long that no one could tell that something was missing.

It was why ninja tended to live so….passionately compared to civilians. Why it was seen as an honor to be a jonin-sensei, rather than a chore to be a highly trained shinobi assigned to babysit children.

You had to make the widest and deepest mark you could on the world before your oh so short time was up and the village continued to live on without you. If I can leave half as large a mark as him, I'll consider it a life well lived.

Of course, neither he nor I would have it any other way. I'd want to know that the village, the people that I died for, would continue to thrive because of the sacrifice I made And I know he'd be happy his teammate made it out, hospitalized though she may be. The Will of Fire they all shared would happily gutter itself out if it meant another could live off the ashes.

So that's what we had to do, as much as it hurt. To go back to business as usual. Well, not as usual, as I now had big shoes to fill just trying to match the standard he set every day just by being himself.

But I'd have to consign him to that legion of ghosts that haunted the hearts and minds of the village. Until the day came that he too would be nameless and forgotten outside of an etching on a single stone.

But that day will not be today or anytime soon, I can promise you that. I will never forget you, senpai.

But kami I'd do anything to never have to go through this torture again.

* * *

Aoba Yamashiro slid the stack of papers into its proper place, a final favor for a fallen friend, and went back to getting things in the subdued office up and running again.

* * *

 

Form OR-RSRFCI-57310 [Office Reorganization-Return of Supplies and Redistribution of Files and Confidential Information-Ninja ID 57310]


	3. Form FSRB-Kus-G-UzK

To Ibiki it seemed that every day was just a revelation of another one of their failures.

 

Their failure to protect the Shodaime and Nidaime, allowing that traitor to desecrate everything that they stood for in the truest sense of the word.

 

Their failure to protect the Sandaime, who had given so much to the village for the many, many years that they were lucky enough to have him hold his mantle.

 

Their failure to protect the village itself, so that all of their civilians would have an actual life to come back to, rather than some having to make do with only a pile of rubble.

 

Their failure to root out a mole who had spent _years_ failing out right before he might risk earning a promotion.  More alarmingly, a mole who had risen high enough in the hospital hierarchy to have access to almost any patient room he wanted.  They would now have to spend months, at a bare minimum, looking into "benign" deaths that he may have caused and they were only alerted to the threat he posed by the repeated suggestions of children that he was suspicious.

 

The failure to protect those same children.  Not only needing to send them out into battle, but pitting them against one of the most terrible forces in the Elemental Nations: an out of control bijuu.  The only reason he wasn't currently three hours deep into reaming someone out for that decision was that it was Kakashi Hatake who had to make the call.

 

He was the one man in the village who personally knew, better even than all the others that had also faced the Kyuubi, what horror he was sending those kids in to face.  He was a man who had been forced by circumstance to send his students, the first team in years he hadn't denied with extreme prejudice, into the exact sort of situation that had torn asunder the remnants of his own genin team.  That Kakashi was able to concentrate on his own fights at all showed an indomitable will, no matter how many times over the years it had been broken.

 

Perhaps it spoke of an incredibly strong trust that Kakashi had in his students as well. After all they were, in the grand scheme of things, successful in their mission.  Something for which they should all be thankful for, not just for the potential disaster that had been avoided, but for the fact that the next generation seemed so strong.  Even when circumstances almost demanded otherwise.

 

For all that the village had failed their jinchūriki (another to add to the ever growing list), the exam and invasion had proved that he had considerable skill for a genin and more importantly had a good heart.  While Sasuke Uchiha's skills were never in doubt, it was a pleasant surprise to see how much they had grown. More surprising was the evident fact that Kakashi was working miracles with the psychological mess (the list never ends) the boy was coming out of the Academy.  And going by her conduct during the invasion and the distinct difference in handwriting between Naruto's name and the answers written on his page during the first exam, there was a good head and a good heart in their Nara teammate as well.  A far cry from the sickly girl that Inoichi-senpai worried for almost as much as his own daughter.

 

Her decision to let their enemies return home might even pay off politically in the long run.  Having the only viable long term candidates for Kazekage, either the students directly or potentially their sensei, so indebted to Konoha shinobi would only enhance their position once things got back up and running as normal.  That she was willing to do so at all was encouraging as well, given the rumors that Shikaku's girl had suffered a training accident with the clan's shadow jutsu.

 

But the failure that burned the most right now was laid out in front of him.  Quite literally in fact, the stack of paperwork and black tipped scrolls having finally been unearthed from the bottom of the pile on his desk that he was almost done working through.  On second thought, perhaps that wasn't quite fair, as there were two flames keeping this particular inferno going.

 

The first was the fairly obvious and relatively recent failure of Konoha to its foreign guests.  It was certainly true that the life of shinobi was dangerous, and true enough that Konoha wasn't really responsible if the chunin candidates couldn't handle the obstacles that all the other hopefuls could.  However, there were limits to that lack of responsibility.

 

Limits that tended to be broken when an S-class missing nin from the host village suddenly returned, killed off defenseless genin, and used the resulting empty slots to infiltrate into the exams themselves.   No shinobi, no matter how cynical, should be able to toss genin, even from other nations, toward that sort of preying wolf with the expectation that they should be able to handle themselves.

 

The resounding silence from Kusagakure on the matter, while very understanding in accepting there was nothing Konoha could have done, was just as damning precisely because it recognized that they were incapable of stopping that monster.  However, Ibiki realized he had to be careful to not get in the habit of self-flagellating when it was not necessary.  There was another possible reason for that silence, and it spoke of nothing good happening in the Land of Grass.

 

After the Second Exam had concluded, there were a few war hawks who were convinced that Grass was working in tandem with Orochimaru to attack them.  Leaving aside that Grass trying to attack Konoha would be poor strategic move and that there were few people in the world willing to ally with Orochimaru, it didn't fit what they had heard of the situation there.

 

Grass had done all they can to keep things quiet, it was true.  But everything that had slipped out pointed to Kusagakure had become too fractured to even keep things stabilized at home, much less plan an invasion made in common cause with a foreign power.  And thus far Grass had gained nothing from Orochimaru's infiltration while losing some of its next generation of ninja.  It was in fact one of the ninja laid out before him that pointed to Grass being even more fractured than they had ever thought.

 

If there was one thing the members of Konoha T&I knew, it was how Orochimaru was always on the look out for prodigies, whether it be of skill, of easily corruptible will, or of lineage.  And it was certain that he had combed through Kusagakure's records to see who he might want to possess, or might want to take with him back to the Land of Sound.   So the body of the Uzumaki currently sealed up on his desk was both a relief and a stinging rebuke.

 

For it was a certainty that had Orochimaru known of her existence, he would have either possessed her outright, or deemed her useful enough to take back to his labs.  But Kusakagure was so disorganized to the point that he had somehow missed her.  Her death, while terrible, had nothing to do with the Snake Sannin.

 

For all that the reputation Ibiki had crafted for himself was just a reputation, candor would require him to admit to the occasional fantasy about what he would do to his worst enemies.  Yet nothing in those came close to what this poor girl must have suffered.  With her lineage, and having almost all of her listed experience working in a hospital despite nothing they'd seen showing she had the requisite extreme level of chakra control necessary, it was a near certainty she had healed through giving her life force.  The few random human bite marks found on her arm attested to that.

 

Terrible was the foe that you knew you could not beat, whether it be beast or man.  How much worse then was the foe who grew stronger with each attack?  The foe whose wounds, that you had worked so hard to inflict, healed every time their jaws took a bite out of you?   The girl had been left behind and forgotten, by her hosts and by her teammates, to die a terrible death and now laid in his office, forgotten in the chaos happening in her former home, as if she had never existed.  And wasn't _that_ just appropriate?

 

Yes, the other dead genin in front of him were a sad reality of what had happened, innocent victims as much as any ninja can truly be innocent.  And it was no better for any of them to be forgotten by their home village than for her to suffer the same fate.  But she….she tore open an old wound that all Leaf ninja openly bore in shame.

 

For had they not done the same to the Uzumaki themselves?  Had they not just watched impotently as their ally was wiped out down to the man, and then an effort made by the perpetrators of that atrocity to erase them from the history books?  The leaf on the back of every chunin vest, unique among the Hidden Villages, wasn't just a decoration.  It was a defiant statement to their enemies that Konoha would not forget the Uzumaki, shoving in their faces what they had done.

 

It was not a statement of self righteousness though, an attempt to ignore their own guilt.  For the swirling leaf wasn't white as the actual clan symbol was, as Konoha's own Uzumaki wore on his shoulders.  It was red, the color of their notorious hair, but more importantly the color of the blood spilled on the ground while Konoha only looked on.

 

And here a daughter of that line was in Konoha again forgotten, her death discovered only on accident with every available resource dedicated to investigating Orochimaru. Made to suffer a final indignity of being relegated to the bottom of a pile of paperwork.

 

Ibiki could at least give her one thing that none of her ancestors had been given: a proper burial.

 

It was the least, and the most, he could do.

* * *

 

 Form FSRB-Kus-G-UzK [Foreign Shinobi Remains Bequeathment-Kusa-Genin-Uzumaki Karin]


End file.
